Robocop is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, and Ronny Cox. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on police officer Alex Murphy (Weller) who is brutally murdered by a gang of criminals and subsequently revived by the malevolent mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) as a superhuman cyborg law enforcer known as “RoboCop”.

Some time in the future Detroit, Michigan is a near-dystopia and on the verge of collapse due to financial ruin and rampant crime. To escape mass collapse, the city mayor has signed a deal with the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to allow them to run the underfunded police force, in exchange for allowing OCP to demolish the run-down sections of Detroit and construct a high-end utopia called “Delta City” to be managed by OCP as an independent city-state.

This move angers the police officers as they are now beholden to OCP, and threaten to strike, but OCP evaluates other options for law enforcement. OCP senior president Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) offers the ED-209 enforcement droid, but when it kills a board member during a demonstration, the OCP chairman, “The Old Man” (Dan O’Herlihy) decides to go with the experimental cyborg design titled “RoboCop” as suggested by the younger Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), infuriating Jones, who objects to the idea of a human having robotic parts.

A recently-deceased officer is needed for the RoboCop prototype, so OCP re-assigns police officers to more crime-ridden districts, expecting officers to be killed in the line of duty. One such officer is Alex J. Murphy (Peter Weller), who is teamed with Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen). On their first patrol, they chase down a gang led by the ruthless criminal Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), tailing them to an abandoned steel mill. When Murphy and Lewis are separated, Murphy is brutally gunned down by Boddicker and his gang.

Murphy is quickly pronounced dead and is chosen for the RoboCop program. He is given three primary directives: 1. serve the public trust; 2. protect the innocent; and 3. uphold the law, but the scientists are unaware of a fourth directive in Murphy’s programming. Murphy single-handedly and efficiently cleans Detroit of crime, and Morton is given lavish praise for his success, drawing Jones’ ire. Boddicker ultimately assassinates Morton, under orders from Jones. Meanwhile, Lewis eventually discovers that Murphy is RoboCop. Murphy himself experiences past events from his life, and at one point returns to his former home, finding his wife and son had long since moved away, thinking that Murphy has died.